Author: Editorial Staff

THE African Union (AU) has welcomed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as the newest member of its African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). This took place during the AU’s 30th Forum of Heads of State and Government on Thursday. The meeting included presentations on ongoing or imminent reviews of governance and other spheres in a number of countries, including Liberia, Sierra Leone, Zambia and Kenya. The African Peer Review Mechanism is a voluntary mechanism that enables AU members to provide and submit to evaluation at local, national and continental levels. In his opening remarks, South African President and African Peer…

ETHIOPIA’S Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed rejected US calls for a unilateral ceasefire in the northern Tigray region and dismissed allegations of ethnic cleansing, according to a senior US lawmaker sent to Addis Ababa by President Joe Biden. But Democratic Senator Chris Coons (pictured), recounting his talks with Abiy last weekend in the Ethiopian capital, also praised the prime minister for publicly acknowledging for the first time that troops from neighbouring Eritrea entered Tigray during the five-month-old conflict, after months of denials. Abiy also pledged this week following Coons’ visit that any soldiers who carry out human rights violations will be…

A COMMISSION of historians will after two years work on Friday submit to President Emmanuel Macron a potentially explosive report scrutinising the role played by France during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. Historian Vincent Duclert, who heads the commission, will hand over the report to Macron at 4:30 pm (1530 GMT) and it will then be made public, the presidency said. There have long been claims that France, then ruled by late president Francois Mitterrand, did not do enough to halt the massacres that left at least 800,000 people dead, mainly among the Tutsi ethnic minority, and was even complicit in the…

KENYA’S exports to key markets in Africa rose to an eight-year high in 2020, provisional international trade data show, defying delays at border points caused by efforts to stem the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. Data collated by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) indicate value of goods that were sold to other countries on the continent amounted to KSh243.68bn, (about $2.3bn) a 9.07 percent growth over the previous year. The growth in value of trade between Kenya and Africa to the highest level since 2012 (KSh247.60bn) was largely driven by demand in smaller exports destinations on the continent. Nairobi…

THE grounding of an ultra large container ship in the Suez Canal brought traffic on the central shipping route between Europe and Asia to a standstill. In this Q&A, Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) Global Head of Marine Risk Consulting, Captain Rahul Khanna looks at some of the potential implications of this incident and highlights some of the risk challenges posed by ever-increasing ship sizes. How do operators approach the salvage of such a huge ship? What are the challenges? Container-carrying capacity on ships has increased by 1,500 percent over the past 50 years and has doubled over the…

NOKIA has announced that it is powering East Africa’s first 5G commercial services with Safaricom, the leading telecoms operator in the country. Nokia’s 5G Single Radio Access Network (SRAN) technology and 5G FastMile gateways enable ultra-fast Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) services to Safaricom’s subscribers across Kisumu and the Western Province of Kenya. 5G technology will enable new applications in areas such as virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence for Safaricom subscribers. It will also benefit enterprises across important energy, healthcare, education, transport and entertainment applications. At a launch event in Nairobi on Friday, Safaricom showcased the capabilities of the…

WHEN the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) issued a circular in early February warning banks and financial institutions that ‘facilitating payments for cryptocurrency exchanges is prohibited’ and that they needed to identify and close accounts associated with them, it set the country’s crypto community alight. ‘I was in a danfo [a yellow public transport bus that operates in Lagos] heading home when my phone started buzzing with WhatsApp notifications regarding the CBN ban on cryptocurrency transactions,’ said David Akinwale, a 25-year-old financial analyst who trades in cryptocurrency. ‘It was really disappointing and sad. While other countries are embracing the use…

MORE than a thousand people were homeless on Thursday after a fire ravaged one of the biggest slums in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown, the country’s Red Cross Society said. The fire broke out on Wednesday evening in Susan’s Bay, a seafront slum of homes made from corrugated sheets and scavenged material lying close to the city’s centre. Around 400 homes were destroyed, a local resident said. ‘We are taking stock of the damage for humanitarian assistance,’ an official with the Sierra Leone Red Cross said at the disaster site. An AFP journalist who visited the slum found a desolate vista…

COVID vaccinations funded by MTN Group are now being rolled out in Ghana, with further doses planned for Middle East markets in the coming months. Following a public private partnership with the African Union, MTN pledged a total of seven million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine for health workers on the continent, of which the first 165,000 arrived in the West African country earlier this week. According to Johns Hopkins University, Ghana has recorded 89,893 cases of Covid-19 and 734 deaths. More than 400,000 vaccines have been administered in the country to date. The telco giant confirmed it had partnered with…

GHANA’S planned Eurobond sale will be a key test of appetite for African issuers after a raft of nations sought debt relief, shaking investor confidence. Strong demand for the sale, which includes Africa’s first zero-coupon dollar bond, would encourage other African countries to tap international capital markets for money needed to roll over debt and finance strained budgets. That would also sidestep the need to seek debt relief and the questions that raises over market access, according to Gemcorp Capital LLP. The so-called common framework put together by the G-20 with support from the International Monetary Fund grants developing countries…